Aratus

And Aratus himself also made this plain, since he assaulted the Peiraeus, not twice or thrice, but many times, like a desperate lover, and would not desist in spite of his failures, but was roused to fresh courage by the very narrowness of the slight margin by which he was disappointed of his hopes. And once he actually put his leg out of joint as he fled through the Thriasian plain; and while he was under treatment for this, the knife was often used upon him, and for a long time he was carried in a litter upon his campaigns.

When Antigonus died and Demetrius succeeded to the throne,[*](Antigonus Gonatas died in 239 B.C., and was succeeded by his son, Demetrius II., who reigned ten years.) Aratus was all the more bent upon getting Athens, and wholly despised the Macedonians. And so, after he had been overcome in a battle at Phylacia by Bithys the general of Demetrius, and reports were rife, one that he had been captured, and another that he was dead,

Diogenes, the guardian of the Peiraeus, sent a letter to Corinth ordering the Achaeans to quit the city, since Aratus had been killed; but when the letter arrived at Corinth, Aratus chanced to be there in person, and so the messengers of Diogenes, after furnishing much diversion and laughter, went away. Moreover, the king himself sent a ship from Macedonia, on which Aratus was to be brought to him in chains.